The moonlight filtered through the partially open window of Ace's rented room, casting a pale, rectangular glow across the wooden floorboards.
The distant, rhythmic hum of Magnolia's nightlife drifted in from the streets, a stark contrast to the absolute silence within his four walls.
Sitting on the edge of his bed, Ace turned the D-Tector over in his hands.
The metallic casing was cold against his palms.
The screen was dark, but he could feel the faint rhythmic pulse of the immense digital data slumbering within its core.
Puppetmon. Machinedramon. MetalSeadramon. Piedmon.
He had summoned the Dark Masters today to teach his guildmates a crucial, brutal lesson in humility and survival.
But holding the device now, a heavy familiar melancholy settled deep in his chest.
To Natsu, Erza, and the others, the Dark Masters were just overwhelmingly powerful summoned beasts—an insurmountable wall to overcome.
But to Ace, they represented something entirely different.
They were the physical anchors of a past life he could never quite leave behind.
Ace leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His eyes fixed on the dark screen of the Digivice, and the shadows in the room seemed to deepen, morphing into the jagged, towering silhouettes of a dense, unfamiliar forest.
It felt like a lifetime ago.
Sometimes, the memories of his original life felt like a hazy, distant dream.
The mundane routines, the glowing computer screens, the quiet, uneventful reality of modern Earth.
But the memory of his arrival in this world—the sheer, suffocating panic of transmigration—was as sharp and vivid as a fresh wound.
Four years ago, he had woken up face-down in the mud of a dense humid forest.
There was no grand summoning circle.
No goddess offering him a choice of legendary weapons.
One moment he was walking home from a late shift and the next, he was violently shoved into the body of a starving exhausted teenager lost in the wilderness.
He remembered the burning ache in his lungs and the sheer terror of not recognizing his own hands.
He had wandered blindly through the massive ancient trees for two days, surviving on stream water and pure adrenaline, until he finally stumbled out of the treeline and onto a cobbled dirt road.
The road had led him to a bustling, vibrant merchant town.
And it was there that his fragile grip on reality had completely shattered.
Ace vividly remembered crouching in a dirty alleyway, watching the street in absolute shock.
A merchant across the road hadn't used a match to light his shop lanterns, he had simply snapped his fingers, conjuring a perfectly controlled orb of fire out of thin air.
A few minutes later, a patrol of armored guards marched past, loudly discussing the jurisdiction of the "Magic Council" and the latest bounties posted in the "Kingdom of Fiore."
Fiore.
Magic Council.
The realization had hit him like a physical blow to the stomach.
He was in Fairy Tail World.
To a reader sitting behind a screen, the world of Earthland was a fun exciting adventure filled with the power of friendship.
But to a powerless, starving kid crouching in an alleyway, it was a terrifying death trap.
This was a world where dragons could casually obliterate continents, where dark guilds wiped out entire towns for dark rituals and where rogue mages could level city blocks just by getting into a bar fight.
He had no magic.
He couldn't feel the "Ethernano" in the air.
He was a completely ordinary, defenseless baseline human in a world of walking weapons of mass destruction.
He had pressed his back against the cold brick wall of the alley, pulling his knees to his chest.
The absolute despair had been suffocating.
He was going to die here, as a nameless beggar in a background town, before the main plot even began.
And then, he heard the sound.
"Ping."
It wasn't a sound from the street.
It's a crisp, mechanical chime that echoed directly inside his skull.
A translucent, pale blue holographic screen had materialized in the air right in front of his eyes
[System Reboot Complete. Host Soul Signature Verified.]
[Digital Summoning System Initialized. Granting First Partner...]
A sudden flash of light illuminated the grimy alleyway, and a red-and-black D-Tector dropped into his open palm.
Standing on the cobblestones right in front of him was a creature that absolutely did not belong in the world of magic.
It was a bipedal reptile wearing a thick, blue-striped fur pelt, featuring a single, sharp horn on its snout.
Gabumon.
The Digimon had looked up at the terrified, starving boy.
It offered a warm, steady presence in a world that felt completely alien.
"Are you my Tamer?"
Ace closed his eyes, a faint, nostalgic smile touching his lips as he sat in his moonlit room.
That single question had changed his trajectory.
With Gabumon by his side, he had managed to survive his first year in Earthland.
They had hunted in the forests, clashed with low-level bandits, and slowly learned to navigate the dangerous world of magic.
Through the system's reward mechanics, he eventually gained his second partner: Agumon.
But the smile faded from Ace's face as the memory shifted to the year X781.
The turning point.
The nightmare.
They had been traveling near the borders of Fiore when they were ambushed by a vicious Dark Guild.
The dark mages were ruthless, outnumbering and overpowering them.
Ace had been badly injured and in a moment of sheer desperate panic to protect his Tamer, Agumon's data had violently corrupted.
Pushed to the absolute brink of rage and despair, Agumon had forced a dark uncontrollable Digivolution.
Ace's breath caught in his throat even now, four years later, just thinking about it.
He remembered the sky turning an unnatural, sickly purple.
He remembered the agonizing roar that tore from Agumon's throat as his flesh burned away, replaced by a towering, skeletal monstrosity of bone and dark energy.
SkullGreymon.
What followed wasn't a battle anymore but a slaughter.
SkullGreymon had completely lost its mind to the destructive instincts of the dark evolution.
It unleashed an apocalyptic barrage of Dark Shot missiles, reducing the entire dark guild to ash, craters, and mangled corpses in a matter of minutes.
The surrounding forest had been leveled and the sheer suffocating aura of death had made it hard for Ace to even breathe.
When the dust settled and the skeletal beast reverted back into a data stream, Ace had collapsed to his knees, shaking uncontrollably.
He had realized a terrifying truth that day: he couldn't control it.
If SkullGreymon appeared in a populated city, it would kill innocent people just as easily as it had killed the dark mages.
Terrified of the monster resting inside his Digivice, Ace had sealed Agumon's Mega-level potential away, relying solely on Gabumon and his own slowly growing magical capacity as he aimlessly wandered the continent.
He was a rogue mage carrying a weapon of mass destruction in his pocket, burdened by guilt and the constant, isolating fear of his own power.
Until he met a short, eccentric old man in a tavern.
"You look like a boy carrying the weight of the entire world on your shoulders," Makarov Dreyar had said, taking a sip from his massive tankard of ale.
"It's foolish to carry something that heavy alone. Why not share it with a family instead?"
Ace slowly opened his eyes, the red-and-black D-Tector resting heavily in his palm.
The screen pulsed once, a faint glow illuminating his face in the dark room.
Makarov hadn't just offered him a guild, he had offered him a sanctuary.
Within the loud, chaotic, fiercely loyal walls of Fairy Tail, Ace had finally found the courage to face his fears.
He had trained relentlessly, mastering his Digital Soul, until he could finally guide the corrupted, skeletal terror of SkullGreymon into the focused, disciplined warrior that was BlackWarGreymon.
He wasn't that starving, terrified kid in the alleyway anymore.
And he wasn't the traumatized wanderer running from his own shadow.
He was an S-Class Mage of Fairy Tail.
He had the Dark Masters resting in the palm of his hand and he had a family he would burn the world down to protect.
"We've come a long way," Ace whispered into the quiet room.
The D-Tector vibrated warmly against his skin.
It was a silent, acknowledging hum from the digital partners slumbering within.
Tomorrow, the brutal training for the guild would continue.
But for tonight, the Tamer simply set the Digivice on his nightstand, leaned back against his pillows and finally let himself rest.
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